Longmont Democrats quiz RTD officials about latest FasTracks plans

Some frustrated that other lines being built while local corridor waits

By John FryarLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
04/04/2012 10:45:55 PM MDT

Updated:
04/04/2012 10:47:27 PM MDT

Kemp
(.)

LONGMONT -- Two Regional Transportation District board members spent nearly two hours on Wednesday night fielding and answering questions about what kinds of transit improvements Longmont-area residents could count on if metropolitan-area voters were to approve a sales-tax increase to accelerate completion of the RTD's FasTracks system.

Many of the nearly 30 people who showed up for Wednesday's Longmont Area Democrats meeting expressed skepticism that -- even with passage of another 0.4 percent sales tax -- the RTD would ever complete the passenger commuter rail service all the way from Denver to Longmont, something the agency promised as part of the FasTracks improvements that were to be financed with the current 0.4 percent tax that voters OK'd in 2004.

Judy Lubow, for example, told RTD board chairman Lee Kemp and board member Tom Tobiassen that she didn't understand why other FasTracks corridors are already under construction -- and why work on those corridors would continue to get priority, even with another sales-tax increase -- while Longmont is left waiting. She questioned why the RTD doesn't slow down work on those other corridors in order to free up some of the money needed to begin extending rail passenger service to Longmont.

"Now you're going to continue building them out, and we're going to get nothing," Lubow said.

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Kemp, however, said that under the "hybrid" plan the RTD board approved on March 27 -- one that relies on passage of a tax increase -- passenger rail service would be extended from Church Ranch area of Westminster into Longmont, built in segments, within a time frame currently projected as sometime between the years 2026 and 2032. In the meantime, the RTD would begin providing bus rapid transit service to communities north of Westminster that are along or near the future Northwest Rail Corridor. That bus service on such highways as U.S. Highway 36, Colo. 119 and U.S. 287, is expected to be made available in Boulder County sometime between 2020 and 2022.

Kemp said RTD officials are working with "stakeholders" in the communities in the Northwest Corridor -- municipal and county officials, business groups and residents such as the people attending Wednesday's meeting -- to try to find out the form that local governments and people think the interim bus rapid transit system should take.

That, in turn, will help the RTD board in crafting the ballot proposal if the board does decide to place a sales-tax question on next November's ballot, Kemp and Tobiassen said.

Kemp, who represents a district on the 15-member RTD board that includes Longmont and the eastern reaches of Boulder County, emphasized his commitment to getting passenger rail service to this city as rapidly as it's financially and practically possible.

"There's nobody that wants to get this done more than I do," Kemp said. "Honestly."

Kaye Fissinger told Kemp and Tobiassen that any ballot question should be as specific as possible with its commitments to what would be built with the additional tax revenue, and when. But she warned that "there needs to be a way that people can understand it without having to read 40 pages."